Study of Acid Treated Mixed Sawdust As Natural Oil Sorbent for Oil Spill

Despite the presence of many techniques to clean up oil spills, sorbents are considered as one of the most attractive techniques due to the high rate of absorption or adsorption and ease of application. Organic-based sorbents have become the best type to use based on their abundance of resources and its biodegradability. Among the many natural organic sorbents available, sawdust has big potential to be used as oil absorbent due to its advantages of being low-cost source, low density and exhibiting hydrophobic-oleophillic characteristics. In this study, the utilization of mixed sawdust as oil sorbent was investigated. The mixed sawdust sorbent was treated using chemicals such as ethanol, sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid to further improve the efficiency for oil absorbency. The performance of as-prepared and acid-treated sorbent was characterized using sorption capacity (g/g). The effects of sorption time and surface condition (on seawater surface or on land) towards the performance of sorbent was then investigated. Besides that, the temperature, oil viscosities and reusability of treated sawdust were also studied. It has been proven that acid treated sawdust has higher sorption capacity of 4.82 g/g even after 90 minutes of sorption with four times reusability due to improved hydrophobic and oleophillic characteristics. It was also found that the viscosity of oil and temperature can also affect the sorption capacity. Crude oil, which poses lower viscosity (30.51cP) and at oil temperature of 27°C gave the highest sorption because of the migration of oil into the structure of sorbent was accelerated. This study indicated the possibility of using sawdust as sorbent for oil spill control.